Gold Dance (Rebroadcast) - 12 May 20256
53:45 Share

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Knowing you could be saving money for the things you really want is a great feeling. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state.

You're listening to A Way With Words, the show about language and how we use it. I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett, and I am sorely tempted to start a new hobby, if only for the slang. What's it this time? Painting bridges? Naming clouds? No, no, no. I got tired of those. But the vocabulary of the hobby I'm talking about includes terms like coinball, nighthawk, gold dance, and my favorite, canter.

Canslaw. C-A-N-S-L-A-W. Canslaw. Coinball? Is this like something you buy at the fair? I'll have a cornball, coinball, and a corndog. And an elephant ear. No, these are all terms that come from the field of metal detecting. Oh, right. Right.

So a coin ball is a chunk of dirt you find with a coin inside. And maybe in their lingo, it has friends, that is, their other little coins in the same hole that you dig. And can slaw is shreds of aluminum cans left after a lawnmower ran over them, which I think is just so picturesque.

And a Nighthawk is somebody who detects illegally at night. And a Gold Dance is what you do if you actually discover gold. Oh, yeah. The little happy jig. Yes. The little happy jig of discovery. Yeah. Smile on your face. Yes. And I was all excited about this having watched the wonderful BBC series Detectorists. Yes. Have you seen that? I've seen a couple episodes. It's fun but weird. Yeah.

Exactly. Well, it's like us. It's a couple of passionate nerds who are maybe socially awkward. Yeah, yeah. Keep going. Yeah. I think it's just hysterically funny. I am really luxuriating in this show. But apparently metal detecting is becoming very trendy in this country. You can go on Instagram and see very fashionable photos of women with their metal detectors. There are.

Instagram metal detecting influencers? Is this what you're telling me? This is what I am telling you. Look, unless you're wearing white socks with sandals and you've got a dad bod, I don't think you can be a real metal detecting influencer. I just don't think there's an opening for you.

So, Martha, I guess you'll be sharing some more metal detecting language later. I absolutely will. I am just so excited about this new hobby, new potential hobby.

Well, if you find nuggets of wonder and brilliance in what you've been reading and hearing, share it with us and we'll share it with everyone else. 877-929-9673. Or if you've got thoughts and questions about language of any kind, send them to us in email, words at waywardradio.org. And if you've got responses or ideas, put them on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hey there, you have a way with words. Yes, hello. This is Larry Branhorst. I'm calling you from a little town of Sparks, Georgia, right at the moment. What can we do for you, Larry? I was wondering, these newscasters, like news shows or talk shows or whatever, and even on the radio, if like I'm sitting there listening and they go to a commercial break and

Then when they get done with their commercial break, they always go like, welcome back. And I'm going like, welcome back? What do you mean welcome back? I didn't go anywhere. You guys are the ones that left me. Even if I was watching the show and I was really interested in it, they left. And then they're welcoming me back. So it's like they got it 180 degrees backwards. Okay. I got a couple things to say that I think will take a little bit of the edge off of this for you. All right.

Okay. One of those is that the welcome back is part of the glue of broadcasting as it's sometimes called. And we use this on radio too, where you've got to,

do things to ease people in and out of the different segments of the show. And you can't make too many assumptions about what happened in between both what happened on the stations side, the radio station or television station side, or on the listener's side. So those television shows that you're watching, they don't know maybe what the local station did in between their segments. They don't have a lot of control over the commercials, for example, necessarily, except maybe even if they're the local news. Okay.

So they've got to come up with something fairly basic to kind of cover all the eventualities to ease you out and to ease you back in. The other thing they want to do is they want to make it brief. They want to do something simple. Welcome back is two words. It kind of does the job. And they want to make it friendly. Welcome does that. But there's another thing. There's a linguistic concept here known as the least expenditure of effort.

And the linguists who have proposed this talk about how a lot of our social transactions are formalities that are pretty much meaningless, except that they

fill this back and forth ritual. When you go to the grocery store and you're in the checkout line, you say hello to the clerk and they say hello back or they say, how are you? And you say, how are you? And neither one of you really cares all that much, but you're required by social convention to have that back and forth.

And this happens a lot of the times in a lot of places. You know, when you're in the workplace and you pass a coworker that you see 15 times a day, you make some kind of gesture, either a grunt or a noise or a head nod or something to acknowledge their presence. So sometimes you just raise your eyebrows a little bit because the social convention requires that you make some expenditure of effort, but it's the least expenditure of effort. It doesn't matter what it is. And so welcome back.

fills that. It's the least expenditure of effort that they can do just to

meet that social convention. Well, Larry, now you have me feeling self-conscious because of course on this show, after we take a break, we come back and we say, you're listening to away with words. You're probably sitting there going, I know. No, no, I don't do that. I just, it's the welcome back. It's like, I actually left and I did something and came back. That's the part that, you know, so like when, when, when somebody comes in,

in the work the next day and stuff. And I'm already there early and I'll say, hey, welcome back. And they look at me like I go, well, you left and you went home and stuff and you came back to work, didn't you? They go, oh, yeah, yeah. And then we start or whatever, you know. But... Martha, I think I agree with Larry. I think...

If I were scripting a show like that, I would just skip the welcome back and just say, as soon as I started the segment, say, today we're talking with Larry about greeting and saying hello. Larry, welcome. Larry, you were saying before the break, blah, blah, blah. Like I would just go right into the segment and just skip the welcome back because either way, all I have to do is summarize what we're doing and go right into the segment, right? Or take the opportunity to, you know, get some exercise, run around the house and then come back.

That's probably very healthy. Make them truthful. Actually, go away. Help them out. Yeah, but then I might miss the welcome back, and I'd have to just come in and jump in, you know? Oh, that's true.

Either way. Oh, Larry, we're going to get so many calls about this and people who agree with you and have better ideas for the TV folks. I just know we are. So thank you for opening that can of worms. And we'll be sure to share what people have to say on the show. OK? Yeah, no problem. Appreciate it. You guys enjoy the day. Thank you. All right. Be careful out there. For sure. All right. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye-bye. What should television people be saying when they come back from a break?

877-929-9673. Email words at waywardradio.org.

Hi there, you have a way with words. Hi, my name is Sam. I'm calling from Brooklyn. Hey Sam, welcome. Well, what's on your mind today? So I am originally from Arkansas and when we were kids, when we were swinging next to each other, if we started swinging in sync, we would say, get out of my bathtub. And I then moved to Missouri and discovered that no one there used that expression and

Years later, I was a classroom teacher here in Brooklyn and discovered that no one here used that expression. And then recently, I was talking to a friend from Maine who did know what that expression meant and used it in the same context that I did. So I think that you had discussed in the past, you know, where that that.

that expression might come from. But I was really curious about how it would be common in Arkansas and in Maine, but not in any of these states in between. Oh, that's a great question. When you were a kid in Arkansas, on the playground, you'd be swinging. And what's happening when... And then what's the expression that you say again? When you're swinging, you know, when you get to a point where you're swinging side by side, really in sync with each other, one of the kids would say, "'Get out of my bathtub.'"

Get out of my bathtub. Yeah, that's it. So what we talked about before was maybe one of the reasons that people say get out of my bathtub is because that dirt hollow underneath your feet kind of looks like a bathtub.

Oh.

And Sue, also from California, says they would say, get out of my toilet. So there's like a theme here. There's like a bathroom theme. Anna in Ohio said they called it double dating. And similarly, Catherine Tallahassee said they would yell, look, we're married. Yeah.

If you're swinging in sync. There's all these variations. And that's how children's folklore works. Children not only pass it to each other, but they come up with their own innovations. They want something that's theirs. Now,

The great folklorists Iona and Peter Opie have done a lot of work and have several books of children's folklore. And I've talked about it on the show before, and it's some of my favorite work at all in all of folklore. And they talk about this strange circumstance, for example, when a rhyme would be about, say, the royalty in London. There'd be a rhyme on the playground that they would collect.

And then they would get, say, a letter two weeks later from one of their correspondents in Australia, one of their informants, with that same rhyme. And you wonder, how could that happen? How did a children's rhyme make it across the oceans and these two continents and these two playgrounds? And it's because the networks of children work the same way that...

adult networks do. Children, they pass these things just as quickly as they pass the common cold, really. They're little sponges for everything, including funny little rhymes and funny little sayings and...

They're also quick to parrot. They're quick to say something back and repeat it later. So in some ways, children are more social than adults, and they're more likely to see this stuff, this folklore spread across great distances. Well, thank you so much. This was really wonderful. Thanks for sharing these memories. Call us again sometime. Thank you. Bye, Sam. Bye-bye. Bye. 877-929-9673.

Grant, here's a little bit of metal detectorist slang that I think you'll appreciate, and that is joke tag. J-O-K-E, joke tag. It's when they find something that's not valuable and they put on it a Roman-era coin, but it's just a pull tab from an old Fanta. Yeah.

There are a lot of pull tabs for sure. And people call those beaver tails as a matter of fact. Beaver tails. That's funny. I don't know. What's a joke tag? A joke tag is something that you use to play a practical joke on other detectorists. It's a small metal plate that you put your name on and you leave it behind for other people to find. That's kind of evil. It is, isn't it?

But, you know, you got this little community of fellow enthusiasts. It's fun to play a little joke every once in a while. What's the language of your little community? 877-929-9673. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from Ebbgliss.

After an initial dosing phase of 16 weeks, about 4 in 10 people taking EBCLS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin. And most of those people maintained skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EBCLS, Lebrechizumab LBKZ, a 250 milligram per 2 milliliter injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with

prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Ebglus can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to Ebglus. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Ebglus. Before starting Ebglus, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about Ebglus and visit ebglus.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979.

You're listening to A Way With Words, the show about language and how we use it. I'm Martha Barnett. And I'm Grant Barrett. And here he is ducking in the doorway like Gandalf in a hobbit hole, our quiz guy, John Chinesky. Hi, John. That's right. Any six foot five person has to duck in this tiny little warren you call your studio or my studio, actually, for some reason. OK, how are you guys doing? How are you this week? Fantastic. Fantastic. You? Good, good. I'm doing great. There's this old joke.

The joke is, what's a synonym for a thesaurus? Well, it's a book of synonyms, of course. Now, let's run some common titles and phrases through a thesaurus and see what comes out the other end. For example, if I asked you to identify the novel Self-Respect and Bias, you would answer...

Pride and Prejudice. Yes, Pride and Prejudice, 1813. Jane Austen, very good. So you're on board already. Now, the clues coming up are a mix of titles and phrases. Bear in mind, I've synonymized each word separately, and the synonym may not reflect the original intended meaning of the word. Ready? Okay. Okay. We'll start with some easy ones. It's one of the most famous works of art, The Ultimate Repast.

The Last Supper. Yes, The Last Supper. Good. How about the board game Frivolous Chase? Does this have to do with trivia? Yes, it does. Trivial Pursuit? Trivial Pursuit. That's right. I don't think the kind of trivia I do is not frivolous. Just going to put that out there. Now, sometimes I just synonymized the key words in a phrase. For example, this is something you might hear regularly, though you may not believe it.

Your shout is significant to us. Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line and a representative will be with you shortly. I don't even believe when Grant says it. Now, you guys are too good at this. I'll just give you the clue. And if you need a category, I will provide. Okay, here's the first one. The sizable blow supposition.

The name of my next album. Sizable Blow Subvention by Grant Barrett. I love it. The Big Bang Theory. Theory, yeah. Yes. To blow something is to bang. Blow. Yeah. End of a Vendor. Willie Loman. Yes. Death of a Salesman. Death of a Salesman. That's right. Arthur Miller. How about this one? Subsist. Caconate. Cherish. Oh, man.

Pray love. Live, laugh, love? It is live, laugh, love. Anyway, we lived through that puzzle. We laughed at a few of the answers. And I just love you guys. You're fantastic. So well done. Oh, thanks so much, John. Thank you. Words and language, slang and grammar. 877-929-9673. Email words at waywardradio.org. ♪♪♪

Here's some more slang that I keep running across as I read about metal detectorists. One of them is rhubar. R-U-B-A-R. Can you guess what that is? No, I don't. It sounds like foobar or rebar. It does. But if you find something that's metal that's been buried for a long time, it might be rusted beyond all recognition. Ah, yes. Rusted instead of fouled up. Indeed. Indeed.

877-929-9673. Hello, you have a way with words. Hey, Grant, this is Willem, and I am calling from Chicago. How are you? Hi, Willem. Welcome to the show. Hey, Willem. I recently finished graduate school. Thank you very much. And while I was in graduate school, I had a professor at Northwestern who would constantly say when he was giving lectures, quote, end quote, and then he would go on to talk. And

And I always found it kind of funny that he said, quote, end quote, as opposed to quote, unquote. And this particular professor is from Argentina. So a part of me felt like, oh, maybe it's just a colloquial thing. Like maybe in Argentina they say it differently or it's translated differently. So I didn't really think anything of it.

You know how when you hear something new for the first time, and then of course you hear it every day for the next year kind of thing? Sure. So I started hearing that all the time. And then I thought, am I crazy? Is it quote, end quote, and not quote, unquote? Because I thought it was quote, unquote. And then of course I started looking it up and the etymology from...

from what I could find, isn't really defined. Like there's not a clear etymology for quote, unquote, or quote, end quote. But boy, is there a conversation and a debate online about which one is correct. So I thought I should call you guys, since you are obviously the experts on record, and say, what is the definitive answer? That is my question. Oh, definitive. The definitive answer. Yeah.

But I'm wondering where else you hear end quote. Do you hear it or are you reading it? No, no, I definitely am not reading it. I'm hearing it. And what's interesting is I've always thought that it was quote unquote if you are saying that as a pair before.

for giving the quoted text in speech. So if I were to say, so Martha, I was talking to Grant and he said, quote unquote, this guy is crazy. Like I could see it being quote unquote. But if I'm saying a longer quote, if I say, hey, I was reading a book by Sam Harris and Sam went on to say, quote, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, end quote,

then I could see where it would be different between quote, unquote, unquote, end quote. But I recently was listening to one of the many audio books that I constantly listen to. And the author of this particular audio book said, quote, end quote. And then he went on and quoted this long paragraph. And I just thought it was so weird that he said, quote, end quote.

Right. Yeah, you're raising several important points, one of which is that quote unquote, as you pointed out, is its own idiom. I might say yesterday I gave myself a quote unquote haircut. Right.

Which adds a little bit more meaning, right? I didn't, maybe that haircut doesn't look as good as if I went to see. It's interesting also that you mentioned audiobooks because if you're an audiobook narrator, particularly in nonfiction, the company's

So the company you're working for may have a house style where they prefer that you end a quotation with the word end quote. So as you said, quote, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, end quote. And in the same way, reading audio books, if there's a caption, for example, they'll say caption quote.

Martha has a terrible haircut, end caption. Or if there's a longer explanation, they'll say reader's note. Martha couldn't get to see her stylist and she has actually tried to do artistic projects before, end note. So you'll have end caption, end note, and end quote.

You've probably read enough online to know that end quote and unquote apparently arose in response to the need to render speech in writing, starting with the telegraph in the 19th century and then later dictation devices. It's less natural in everyday speech, but...

but it's useful in things like audiobooks. But I'm interested that the Argentinian professor used end quote, because it's not as common as unquote, is it, Grant? No, it isn't. Not at all. Quote, unquote is used both in the UK and in North America, but quote, end quote is mainly American English, and it's really rare, although the

Oh, that's so funny.

I love it. Well, thank you so much. This has been so great. And especially, you know, during the pandemic, I just can't tell you how much the show has been such a great form of support because I can listen to an episode over and over and over again and always get something new. And I certainly love all the book recommendations and just finished reading for the second time Diary of a Comic Queen, which was unbelievable. Keep the...

Yeah, it was so funny and just so interesting. So definitely keep the recommendations coming over the airwaves. So thank you. Thank you both so much. This has been so great. Thank you, Will. We appreciate the call. Call us again sometime. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. You may be a little shy about being on the radio, but it doesn't take anything but dialing the phone to be on A Way With Words, 877-929-9673, or explain your thoughts in email, words at waywardradio.org.

In English, if something isn't that far away, we'll say it's just a stone's throw. But I love the German expression. It's Katzensprung, which means cat's jump. It's a cat's jump away. Oh, and I love that because it's just comprehensive in English. Katzensprung? That's very good. Katzensprung? Right. Just a springing cat. Yeah.

I love that expression because you can just picture it, right? I mean, as many times as you've seen your cat spring from one spot to another. It's just a little distance. I've got one who is a great jumper. She can do like a nearly 10-foot vertical leap on top of my big bookshelves. It's lovely to see.

We know we have a lot of bilingual, trilingual, and multilingual listeners. Tell us the interesting words in the languages you know. 877-929-9673 or email words at waywardradio.org. Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, this is Sandy. I'm calling from Richmond, Virginia, but my heart is in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. Oh, lovely. That's great country. Yeah, if you know it, yes it is. I have a

a word that's been a mystery in my family for many years. My mom went to Smith College in Northampton, Mass., and once a year they would take a day off

from school and they would go to the mountains and they would have bacon bats. As far as I know, my mom recently died so I'm afraid she doesn't have the answer. She's been dogging me to get the answer to this. They would get together and they'd play games and they would, I

I'm thinking they would sing games for sure. It was all women's college. Well, mom had always wondered what this word meant and what would the origin was of it was. And I Googled it and she didn't seem to be terribly satisfied. And so I decided I would probably ask some of the old timers here around the lake, what their definition of bacon bat was. And one of them said, one of them said,

Well, we go across the lake and we would have hot dogs and hamburgers and we would just bat thoughts around. Just shoot the breeze. Okay.

And then this other guy said, oh, no, we would have hot dogs and hamburgers. And then we would go down the next day and play softball. And that's where the bat came in. And then my husband had this crazy notion that maybe it had something to do really with bacon and with –

A bat, but maybe long ago they called sticks bats. So the question I have for you, is it bake and bat or is it bacon bat? And is it bat like softball or is it bat like things that fly around? That's my question.

Alright, so Sandy, we're talking about, let's just get this right, B-A-C-O-N space B-A-T. Two words, right? Bacon bat? Bacon bat. Nobody really knew how to spell it. Or maybe it's bake, B-A-K-E. Well, let's clear that one up right away. Martha and I both know that it is bacon bat. Bacon like the meat.

All right. And the really interesting thing is that this is an entirely different definition of the word bat. There's an old sense of bat that means a spree or a debauched activity. It may come from an old phrase to go on the batter, which means to walk the streets for purposes of prostitution. I don't think my mom would agree with that.

No, no, no. It didn't mean that after a while. It lost that meaning after a while. Yes, yes. I was getting to that. For college girls back in the day, and the earliest we see this is 1907 and associated indeed with Smith College. No kidding. Oh.

Yes, absolutely. And so the idea was a spree sort of with the air of being naughty a little bit. You know, you're getting to go outside and experience the great outdoors. You're doing something other than being stuck at college studying. And so, yes, it was a much watered down version of the term bat. But it was a great excuse to go out and do something different, to party outdoors outside.

Here's a wonderful description of that kind of activity from a few years later in the Yampa Leader, which is a Colorado newspaper. Check out this description, Sandy. A young college friend informed me that the very latest thing in outdoor affairs was a bacon bat.

We all feel the call of the wild on these glorious days, and I'm sure many of our readers will want to have a bacon bat just as soon as they read this. Provide plenty of delicious bacon, sliced very thin, sweet potatoes, and several dozen finger rolls. Build a fire, roast the sweet potatoes, or take a frying pan and have the potatoes boiled at home and fry them over the coals.

Grill the bacon on the ends of long sticks, insert the finger rolls, and you have a meal fit for a king. And this writer also suggests you bring coffee and says roasting Irish potatoes and taking a jar of butter with plenty of tissue paper napkins. Hard-boiled eggs are a welcome addition with a jar of tiny cucumber pickles and olives, both ripe and green. That was their version of it. But what was the date of that?

That was 1911. And they talked about tissue paper? Tissue napkins. Tissue napkins. Yeah. And there were different versions. Yes. But there were different versions of this. But it was the idea of luxuriating outdoors with other people and really tasty food. Yes. Take me away. It does appear to have started with Smith College, which, as you know, is in Northampton, Massachusetts. Yes.

that 1907 that Martha mentioned was part of their Mountain Day. Do you know what that is? Well, I do because I went to school in Northampton too, and we would have a Mountain Day, and it was always a surprise. So Mountain Day, which they still have and they had in 1907, is a day where nobody but the school president knows, but...

On an unknown day, the clock tower bell is rung, classes are canceled, and everyone heads for nature, or is supposed to. And so in 1907, according to newspaper articles, 1,500 girls headed for the woods, and they had bacon bats in the woods. That's wonderful information, which I could not have Googled.

I knew I could get the information from you. Oh, you're geniuses. How cool. Thank you. Sandy, thank you so much. Thanks for sharing your memories. Thank you so much. That was good. That was fun. Appreciate it. All right. Bye-bye. Take care. Thanks, Sandy. Bye-bye.

There are lots of words we hear from the other generations, younger and older, that we need a little explanation for. Martha and I can help you sort that out. 877-929-9673. Email words at waywardradio.org.

Ross McIntyre of Lyme, New Hampshire, wrote us to say that he's been pondering the relationship that we humans have with the machines in our environment. And this was prompted by an experience he had when he parked on a

on the upper level of a parking garage and he left after hours. And so what he was supposed to do was take the little ticket that you get at the beginning from that machine and put it into an envelope along with the payment. Well, he left the payment, but he forgot to include the parking ticket in there.

And he got home and he was looking at that ticket and had the number of the ticket and the time and the date of his arrival. But it also contained the words upper spitter.

And he was thinking, what in the world? Is there actually a machine that gives you a ticket that's called a spitter? Because it spits out tickets? Yes, yes. In that industry, those little tickets are called spitter tickets. And that device, that machine that gives you the ticket that spits it out is called either a spitter or an entry station or a parking ticket dispenser. But spitter is a term in the industry. Right.

I love it. Because that's what it does. It spits out tickets. Right? The ticket spitter. That's fantastic. Send us your stories about language. Our email address is words at waywardradio.org or call us 877-929-9673. This show is about language seen through family, history, and culture. Stay tuned for more of A Way With Words. ♪

Lowe's knows a thriving yard starts with quality care. Right now, get Miracle-Gro 3 quarter cubic foot all-purpose garden soil for just $2. Was $4.58. Plus, get a free Select Ego 56 volt trimmer or blower with the purchase of a Select Ego 56 volt mower. The best yard starts with the best deals. Lowe's. We help. You save. Valid through 514. Excludes Alaska and Hawaii. Selection varies by location. While supplies last.

You're listening to A Way With Words, the show about language and how we use it. I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett. And there is some exciting news in the world of language. That's the publication of the Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English, edited by Michael Montgomery and Jennifer Heinemiller. It's the successor to Montgomery's 2004 volume, The Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English, which was focused on eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. And it's a book that was published in the

And he was the Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and Linguistics at the University of South Carolina. He died in 2019, but Hein Miller, his former assistant, carried on the project. And one thing that's really exciting about this is that it's expanded to include parts of eight states from southern West Virginia to northeastern Alabama. So this means there are thousands more

entries and senses and citations. There are even photos in this dictionary. It's got this wonderfully expanded section on the grammar and syntax of Southern Appalachian and Smoky Mountain English, which Grant, as you know, is really wonderful because there's such a stereotype about speech in that area. People

Some people think of it as reflecting somebody who's uneducated, but the truth is that there's a system, there's a grammar, there's a structure and a beauty. It's not arbitrary. There are historical reasons for these features, and the volume itself, as you know, is glorious. It is a fantastic successor to the original volume, and it did merit, even though it is technically a second edition, it is so very different from the first. It has so much more material. It is worthy of the new title.

And I got to say, this is a fine work of lexicography. As a dictionary editor, I can appreciate all of the hard work. And it's not just Michael Montgomery and Jennifer Heinemiller. This is based on the work of Joseph Hall, who in the 1930s as a doctoral student began doing linguistic research in the Smoky Mountains. And he went into people's homes and communities and gathered information

immense amounts of information in print form and audio tapes over decades. And that formed the original core of what Dr. Montgomery had been working with. And that information is in here as well. So this is a passion project for multiple people. And you can sense the

care and even the affection for Appalachia and the people of Appalachia that is in this book. I think they've treated the language and the community with a lot of respect, and I think this is a work of lexicography that will be appreciated for centuries to come. This is a fantastic book.

book. Indeed, and it's a book that you can just sit and browse and see the wonderful poetry of the vocabulary of Southern Appalachia. I was just looking at words for specific times of day, like day bust, which is another term for daybreak, or good dark, which

which is after twilight. It's when it's good and dark outside. Or blue snow is fine powdery snow that's very cold. There's a lot of poetry there, but it's really worth reading the part about the grammar and syntax of that area. I spent part of every summer in western North Carolina, and I heard this stuff all the time. And it's so great to see it described in grammatical terms, like, for example, the postponed one.

In the Smokies, to identify alternatives, speakers will use the word one instead of not only or either. For example, they'll say, this medicine will kill you or cure you, one.

They'll end the sentence with that. Or settlers come here in the 1830s or the 1840s. One. That is just a natural feature of the speech in that area. And I heard that growing up. And it's so great to see it detailed and explained in this volume. Yeah, that's one of many things. This book that we both recommend is The Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English, published by the University of North Carolina Press.

It is edited by Michael Montgomery and Jennifer Heinemiller. And we'd love to hear your questions and observations about any aspect of language whatsoever, so give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your stories an email to words at waywardradio.org.

Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, this is Alouette Islin from Nelson, New Hampshire. Alouette, hello, welcome to the show. What a lovely name. Thank you, I like it. What would you like to talk with us about? Well, I am curious about the origin of the word hosy, as in, I hosy the front seat. And some people say dibs, and you know, I've been talking about this to people and they're like, hosy, I never heard that. And I said, well, it's like dibs. And they say, oh, I know dibs.

But have you heard this word, Hosey? Oh, yeah. We've heard it and lots of variations of it. So where did you grow up? I grew up in various places. I was born in Massachusetts. We lived in Burlington. And then we moved to Marblehead. So I was in Massachusetts for most of my childhood and then Milwaukee. And

And now back to the East Coast again. So I'm not really sure where I heard this word. I sort of think of it as a childhood word, so probably something that I heard a lot in Massachusetts. Oh, sure, sure. That makes a lot of sense. So many kids in Massachusetts grew up saying hosie or hoosie or hornzie or honzie.

to claim something, to lay claim to whatever object you want. And isn't part of the whole game that you have to say it before anybody else? Yes. Yeah, the first person who says it wins, right? Exactly. Right, exactly. Exactly.

It's pretty local to New England. And Grant, I'm not sure that we have an origin for that. Some people have suggested that maybe it's a version of holdsy. You know, I've got a hold on this thing. Yeah. Oh. There's some report of it from Horace Reynolds in his American Speech article that he had a report of it from southern England, but it's not...

It's not confirmed. It's possible that it came over from the UK. Right. And it's one of many, many, many, many terms that children find useful. Yeah.

Dibs and honeys and finny and fin dibs and a wacky and fin wacky. And those are just the U.S. ones. Yeah. I don't know those. I mean, I know dibs, but I haven't heard the others. Hosey is common in New England. Or as Grant said, finny is another good one. I finny that. And then, of course, there's this whole group of expressions for defending what you've claimed, you know, announcing that you're not going to share it with anybody else.

Like no divvies, like I'm not going to divide it up. There's a whole slew of these. Wow. Okay. In this article in the American Speech, there's an Irishman in Cork who says when he was a kid,

You had to say the whole string of them. You would say fin dibs, fin shackies, no dibs, no aches, no chips, no divvies, and no haveens. So that's how you said, I'm not sharing this. It'd be something that you brought from home or bought at the store. And it just meant, I'm not sharing any of this. So no one else can have what they call the first bore on your apple, a first bite, or a snooksy or licksies of your lollipop. They could not have a share of it. So do you use that now?

No, I'm not sure why. I mean, I was listening to your show and it came into my head and I thought, I need to ask these folks, you know, where this comes from. And no, I haven't used it lately. I mean, would you still use it as an adult is what I'm wondering. Yeah. In certain company, yes. In certain company. If you were in a restaurant and you want a particular something behind the glass, you say, I hosie that piece of chicken. Yeah.

You wouldn't do that? I hosey that last bagel. Yeah. You're going to buy the sliced pizza place? I hosey that last pizza piece? I could see myself saying that, yeah.

We'll put a bunch of these on the website when we post the show. But, Alouette, thank you so much for the call. Thank you. Take care. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Maybe while we were talking about terms for claiming or defending what you have when you were a kid, all this dibs and hosy, maybe you thought of a term that you used that we didn't mention. Well, we'd love to hear that.

Any of your variations are welcome. 877-929-9673. Or what else came to mind when we talked about the games that kids play? The weird words that you use and the rhymes and chants. Send it to us in email, words at waywardradio.org or tell us on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Among detectorists, those people who use metal detectors to find cool stuff buried underneath the earth, there's a term, dials and smiles. Dials and smiles? Yeah. Wow, it's like a rhyming compound. What does that mean? Mm-hmm.

That's a hardcore detectorist. That's somebody who really loves tweaking the dials on their detector. You know, they're really into the technology because there's, of course, a whole range of these metal detectors. Oh, yeah. I can see the fascination of the Gazich as much as the Discovery. Yes. Yeah.

I can see you really getting into that, Grant. I can see me getting too far into it. I need to go to some of those East Coast cities, though, where they have, you know, many more hundreds of years than we do in California of settlement by the French and the English and the Dutch and the Spaniards. And we have a greater chance of finding something important. Of course, we could always find a lost wedding ring or something like that. But dials and smiles. That guy is all dials and smiles. He really likes tweaking that equipment.

Well, we like to give you smiles on the dials. Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or talk to us on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D. Hi, you have a way with words. Hi, I'm Phillip. I'm from DFW area in Texas, and I was wondering about the phrase, um,

The "low sick" or "low sig" - I'm not sure exactly which one - as a police officer, that's a phrase we use. We'll say it over the radio so that other officers know the status of whatever the victim is. If a guy had hit by a car, we would say he's "low sick," meaning that his chances of survival are low or slim, but we don't want to say that over the radio.

So I was just wondering where that came from and how that came about and if it's low-sick or low-sig or what. So you're a police officer in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area, right? That's correct. This kind of plugs into a couple different things, and I've definitely got information for you. The term is low-sick, L-O-W-S-I-C-K. That's two words.

While I do find it in one dictionary of police jargon and slang, it's actually an American Southernism. And it's largely used by black Americans in the American South. And it goes back about 100 years. If you look online for people using it, there are a couple places where you find police in Dallas using it and maybe police in Atlanta using it.

but mostly it's used by black authors that I can find anywhere in print using it, including one noteworthy example is a short story by Langston Hughes, Simple Stakes Acclaimed of 1957. And you can find it in the young adult novels of Mildred Taylor, such as Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry from 1976. So it's really interesting to me because this low sick, meaning neurotic,

Near death or very, very ill, so ill that it just really looks like you're not going to make it. This term appears to have migrated from being an everyday term for some people to being very specific in some police departments in the South, but not all police departments in the South. Wow, that's interesting. So it's not low-sig. I always thought it was low-sig because it had like low vital signs or something. Low-sick, okay. Okay.

You thought maybe it was low sig for low signal, like a radio might have a low signal if its battery was weak? Or if they're about to be deceased, I would say they have low vital signs, so low sig is kind of what I was thinking. No, it's low sig. You can actually feel low. I say this sometimes. If I'm feeling low, it's like my mood is low, my spirit is low. I might be having a little bit of a...

or molez or queasy stomach, and then you can be sick. And this is a combination of both those words. So if you're low sick, you're like doubly not well. Low sick is like the most sick you can be without croaking. Okay. Well, that definitely follows in line with how we use it. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Yeah.

I'm always looking for in-house uses of language because this is one term I'd really like to get a handle on. The fact that it leapt from being an everyday term for black Southern Americans to being used specifically for some police departments in the South is really interesting to me. Appreciate the answer, sir. Thank you very much. All right. Thanks for calling, Philip. Be safe out there. Yes, sir. Bye. Bye-bye.

We'd love to hear about the slang in your workplace. Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email. The address is words at waywardradio.org. Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, Martha and Grant. This is JJ calling from the western shore of Lake Michigan in Racine, Wisconsin. Hi, JJ. How you doing? Pretty good. Pretty good. I have a little language mystery I was wondering if you might help me make my way through. Oh, yeah? Sure.

I grew up in Coventry, Rhode Island, and I moved to the Midwest in the early 1980s. I learned pretty quickly that there were a lot of different words for things in Racine compared to Coventry, although both areas do use bubbler correctly. One idiom, however, has a very distinctly different meaning pretty much, I guess, everywhere in the world except for where I grew up.

One cold winter day, I was walking to my friend Dan and Sarah's house, and I slipped on an icy sidewalk. When I walked up to their door, I guess I must have looked distressed because they said, hey, are you all right? I said, as I was holding my lower back, no, I just took a dump on the ice, and I think I hurt myself. Laughter ensued.

And I felt pretty incensed because I really thought I had hurt myself. I said, no, I think I hurt my tailbone. And it wasn't until I rephrased myself that, hey, I slipped and fell and I think I hurt myself. And they're like, what are you talking about? And that's when I realized that the idiom that I had used did not mean the same thing that it did in Rhode Island where I grew up.

Not at all. When you said you took a dump on the ice, they were imagining something else. They actually were for a good probably 10 minutes because they were like, oh dear. Oh dear.

You took a dump and you hurt yourself in the process. I did not get a lot of sympathy. And you know what's most strange is when I've been back in Rhode Island, I've asked people about this and they deny it until we were driving on the road and a motorcycle swerved and the guy almost fell off. And my friend Nina said, hey, that guy almost took a dump. And she turned around and looked at me. She's like, we do use it. But

Other than on that momentarily unthought response, they won't admit it. But yeah, you know what? And actually, the oldest meaning of dump back as far as Middle English was about thinking

It's about somebody falling. Like it was used in passages like they dump in the deep and to death they pass, things like that. So the hurliest usage was about people falling. And then later it was about things being kind of jumbled together in a pile or poured out into a pile or dropped in a pile.

Well, I would always tell my fourth graders at the start of the year, as I would explain how I would say things differently, that Rhode Island was settled first. So the way we used it was the first and right way. The linguist and we will argue, but I appreciate the comedy in that. Yeah, I'm sure the fourth graders appreciated it, too. Yeah. JJ, thanks for sharing. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much, guys. All right. Take care now. Be careful out there.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye. Grant, of course, the word that also comes to mind here is polysemy. P-O-L-Y-S-E-M-Y. Polysemy. That's right. Lots of words are polysemous. That means that they have...

More than one meaning. Sometimes they're similar meanings. They're shaded a little differently. But yeah, dump has multiple meanings and they can cause hilarious conflicts of misapprehension if you're in a circumstance like JJ was. We know that you've had these things happen as well where...

Two people just didn't understand each other, and it led to hilarious confusion. We love those stories, and we'd like you to share them with us. 877-929-9673, or tell the story in email to words at waywardradio.org.

Thanks to senior producer Stephanie Levine, editor Tim Felton, and production assistant Rachel Elizabeth Weisler. You can send us messages, subscribe to the podcast and newsletter, and catch up on hundreds of past episodes at waywardradio.org.

Our toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673. Or email us, words at waywardradio.org. A Way With Words is an independent production of WayWord, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Many thanks to Wayward board member and our friend Bruce Rogo for his help and expertise. Thanks for listening. I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett. Until next time, goodbye. Bye-bye. ♪